Youkaigami
by That Nanda
Summary: Souta introduces Inuyasha to a popular RPG. Oneshot.


Youkaigami

"Get up! We're going back NOW!" Inuyasha cried, roughly grabbing the arm of the stubborn girl in front of him. Kagome shook him off just as roughly, and turned back to her Algebra homework. 

"Inuyasha," she seethed through clenched teeth, her eyes never leaving the book on the desk, "I have three VERY important exams tomorrow, and I am going NOWHERE! Is that clear?!" 

"Listen woman, I'm not about to sit around on my ass all night in this boring room while you keep your nose in those stupid spell books! What about the Shikon shards?! Huh? Did you forget about them?" Inuyasha glared at her back, daring her to defy him. He watched as her shoulders hunched up, and she began to quiver with rage. He cracked a small, smug grin of victory. He'd gotten under her skin, it was only a matter of time, now… Suddenly and unexpectedly, Kagome's shoulders slumped. Inuyasha's smirk collapsed as she leaned forward, burying her face in her hands. Her body shook as she sobbed pitifully, and Inuyasha's resolve melted. He reached out a clawed hand to touch her on the shoulder, when she suddenly spun around in her chair to face him. Her eyes were full of tears and desperation. Inuyasha dropped his gaze to the floor, finding it uncomfortable to look her in the eye. Why couldn't she have been angry? It was so much easier then… 

"Inuyasha, I am so tired and, and… frustrated!" she wailed through her tears. "I have THREE exams tomorrow and I haven't been able to study until now! It's getting late, I'm not going to have enough time, and you won't leave…me…alo-ho-hu-hu… he lost the last of her sentence as she burst into tears again. Inuyasha stood there, unsure of how to proceed, his arms hanging loose and impotently by his side. 

"Uh-" he began intelligently, before he was interrupted by a small knock on the door. 

On the other side of the door, Sota waited patiently for permission to enter. He had been listening to his sister and the dog demon fight for over an hour from his bedroom. When he had finally heard what sounded like his sister crying, he had decided that it was up to him to save them from each other. 

"H-Hai?" Kagome gasped out. Sota took that as his cue. _I hope this works… _he thought to himself as he opened the bedroom door just a crack and peeked through it. 

"Oneechan," he began, "I'm bored. Do you think Inu-oniichan could come play with me?" Sota watched as his sister's eyes widened with hope, then turned to look uncertainly at the hanyou. Inuyasha, desperate to escape the situation he had inadvertently found himself in, gulped and nodded. "Hai." He shot Sota a grateful look as he was shuffled out into the hallway and the door was slammed behind him.

"Come on, my room is this way." Sota smiled at the dog demon, and lead him down the hallway. Inuyasha found himself entering a bedroom very similar to Kagome's, yet at the same time, very different. This room was not light and feminine, but bold and playful. Instead of books, this room was full of a wide assortment of what he assumed to be Sota's playthings. Tiny animals, monsters and other things that he couldn't identify were strewn about the floor, making it look like the world's smallest battlefield. Inuyasha carefully made his way across the room to Sota's bed, trying not to step on anything in the process. The bed was the same as Kagome's, only it had blue sheets with strange little yellow creatures on them. 

"That's Pikachu." Sota explained. Inuyasha nodded, having no idea what the boy was talking about. Despite his new location, Inuyasha found himself rapidly losing interest. 

"Great," he muttered, plunking himself down on the bed, "from one boring room to another." Sota frowned at the rude comment. 

"Well, if you like, you can go back and spend some more quality time with my sister."

"Feh." Inuyasha muttered, laying back on the bed and closing his eyes. Sota sighed, becoming frustrated. This was going to be harder than he thought. He perused the bedroom floor, searching for something that might interest the hanyou. He probably wouldn't like Pokemon, they were too cutesy. He wouldn't understand Gundam, being from the Sengoku Jidai and not knowing what a robot was, let alone a Gundam. Sota was at a loss, until a deck of playing cards on his nightstand caught his eye. 

"Oniichan, wake-up!"

"Nani?" Inuyasha asked, opening one eye.

"Youkaigami!" Sota replied, beaming. "It's really fun."

"Youkai?"

Minutes later, Inuyasha and Sota sat across from each other on either end of the bed, the deck of cards divided equally between them. 

"How is paper fun?" Inuyasha asked skeptically. 

"Trust me Inu-oniichan, this game suits you. Now listen and I will explain how the game works. There are 50 cards in the deck, each with a picture of a different youkai on it. We each get 25 cards, picked randomly. Then we use the cards to do battle." Inuyasha's eyebrows raised.

"Are they magic?" he asked. "Once, I had to battle a painter who was able to bring drawings of youkai to life, but that guy had a shard of the Shikon no tama."

"No," Sota said, shaking his head, "This is a lot safer. Now pay attention. Each picture _represents _a different youkai. See the number on this card?" Sota asked, holding up a card with a picture of a toad demon on it. "It says 2, so this youkai has 2 strength points. This one," he said, holding up a card with a cat demon on it, "has 5 strength points, see?" He handed the card to Inuyasha, who looked at it and nodded. "The higher the points, the stronger the monster."

"How do they battle?" Inuyasha interrupted. He was becoming intrigued. Sota smiled. He he'd had a feeling that battling youkai would appeal to Inuyasha. 

"You flip a coin," Sota continued, taking Y10 out of his pocket, "If it lands temple-side up, then the attack was successful. If it lands down, the attack failed. You get three flips of the coin on your turn. When two youkai who are equally matched do battle, the one who has received the most hits by the end of the round is the one who is defeated. If they tie, then the battle goes on until one of them wins."

"So it's all luck!" Inuyasha exclaimed, a hint of disappointment in his voice. 

"No, It takes strategy, too!" Sota insisted. "You have to pick the right youkai in each battle, and try to figure out how many strong youkai your opponant has. You don't want to waste your strongest fighters on weak opponents, because once you've used a card in one round, it must sit out the next three rounds."

"Why?"

"Cause that's the rules!" Inuyasha raised one eyebrow, disdainfully.

"I don't know…it's resting. Now stop interrupting! As I was saying, it doesn't make sense to pit your weakest youkai against stronger opponents, either, because when one youkai is much more powerful than another, it takes the weaker youkai many more attacks to defeat the stronger youkai. If I pit my toad demon against your cat youkai, I must hit your youkai 3 times, because your youkai has 3 more strenght points than mine. But if you were to attack my demon, one successful attack would defeat it. Get it?"

"Got it. But how do you win?"

"Easy. After each round, the winner collects the loser's fallen youkai. The one with the most cards at the end of 25 rounds is the winner. Ok?"

"Ok."

"Let's play!"

Half an hour later, the boys were thoroughly engrossed in their game. Inuyasha had taken to it like a duck to water, and proved to be a formidable opponant for a first time player. He even managed to keep his temper in check when he lost an occasional round, he was enjoying it so much. 

"Heh!" Inuyasha laughed. "That's 3 for me, and you only had 1! Looks like I win again!" Sota nodded good-naturedly, his mouth too busy munching on a rice ball to respond properly. A few moments earlier, Mrs. Higurashi had peeked in to tell them that dinner was almost ready. When they had _both_ begged for 5 more minutes, she had brought their meals to Sota's room, under the pretense that Kagome was too busy studying to have a sit down meal anyway. She thought it was adorable that Inuyasha was getting along so well with Sota, and she didn't want to interrupt the bonding.

"Wow, oniichan," Sota said finally after polishing off the last bite, "That's 4 in a row. You're really good at this."

"Yeah!" Inuyasha said, puffing out his chest just a little. "Well, you'd figure I'd have to be, wouldn't you? I mean, I do it for real all the time!"

"Well, the game's not finished yet," Sota said, a mischievous twinkle in his eye and a grin to match, "and I've got a few tricks left up my sleeve. As a matter of faaaact…I'd like to see how you'll beat _this_!" Sota slammed his card down on the table, and Inuyasha couldn't help but grin from ear to ear. The youkai's strength was 6 points, the highest available in the deck, and the picture on the card was one big, white dog demon. 

"I happen to know for a fact that it's impossible to beat one of these!" Sota said, smiling to beat the band.

"That's mostly true," Inuyasha chuckled accepting the thinly veiled compliment, "but I know a way that always works." Inuyasha quickly shuffled through the deck, then slammed down his trump card, smiling proudly. Sota looked at the card, then looked up at Inuyasha, a confused expression on his face.

"Hanyou? How do you expect to beat Inuyoukai with Hanyou, oniichan? It's the weakest card in the deck."

"N-nani?" Inuyasha stammered. He picked up the card and looked at it more closely. Hanyou rated 1 measly strength point. And no wonder. The picture on the card showed a pale, scrawny, bag-of-bones weakling with a pained grimace on it's pathetic face. It had long bony fingers that ended in twice as long claws, and thin, scraggily white hair that reached down to the back of it's knees. It's ribs could be seen quite plainly; in fact, it looked as though it had never been acquainted with food. It was dirty and naked, apart from a ragged loin cloth. Inuyasha imagined that this half-breed had been kicked around, driven out, hunted and, by the looks of it, didn't have much life left in him. It was a wretched thing, a grasping, desperate thing, and it mocked him. Unable to hold back his anger and disgust, Inuyasha tore the card into tiny pieces.

"Inu-oniichan?" Sota asked, dismayed.

"I don't feel like playing anymore." Inuyasha grumbled. He threw the pieces of the torn card away from him, then turned and left the room. Sota watched him leave wordlessly, then bent down to pick up the pieces. 

Inuyasha barged down the stairs and out the back door. He hopped up into the lower branches of the Goshimboku and stayed there for hours, brooding. As the evening wore on, he listened to the sounds of the household shutting down for the night. From the cool, damp darkness of the outside world, he watched them through the warm, lighted windows of their home. He watched as Mrs. Higurashi tucked Sota into bed. When she kissed Sota on the forehead, he felt a pang of longing. No one had kissed him like that since his mother had died almost a century ago. Seeing this display of affection made him want to be closer to Kagome's family, and to his own humanity. He suddenly wanted very much to be inside the house, amongst her people. It had never occurred to him before that four walls could feel safe, and not confining. He wondered if he went back inside if they would be angry with him. Had Sota told everyone how he'd destroyed the game? Well, he was always mean to Kagome, and she always forgave him… He had almost decided to hop down out of the tree, but at that moment, Mrs. Higrashi turned off the bedroom light, and it felt like his connection to them was broken. He turned his back to the house, resigning himself to the fact that he would always remain an outsider. It didn't matter what he did, the result was always the same. What hurt the most was that this time, it hadn't been his physical differences that had alienated him from the rest of the household. Sota didn't care that he was part youkai, in fact, he seemed to think it was pretty cool. No, this time, it had been his temper that had put him back on the outside looking in. Even if that card had been insulting, deep down he knew that Kagome and her family didn't see him that way. Or at least, they hadn't. Sota probably didn't think he was cool any longer. If only he hadn't been so hasty and violent… 

"Oniichan?" he heard a tiny voice float up from the ground far below. 

"You're supposed to be in bed." Inuyasha answered, more gruffly than he had intended.

"Please come down." Sota called softly. "I'm sorry I made you angry!" Inuyasha landed swiftly and silently behind the boy, causing him to startle. 

"It wasn't your fault." he said quietly. "I'm sorry I ripped up your card." 

"That's Ok, oniichan. I didn't like it anyway. After you left, I decided to make a new card to replace it. Mom found me the cardboard, and Jii-chan helped me draw it. Here, look!" Sota said, holding out something that almost looked like the cards they'd been playing with earlier. Inuyasha took it from Sota's hand and looked at it.

"Now my deck is much better than the ones the other guys at school have." he said, grinning. Inuyasha stared intently at the card. It was poorly drawn, but lovingly made. The youkai on the front of the card wore a red yukata and carried a large sword in one hand. He was also sporting a pair of dog ears. The words at the top of the card read "Inu Yasha, 7 points". Inuyasha smiled faintly, then handed the card back to Sota. 

"Yeah, with a card like that, you can't lose." Then he took Sota by the hand and started to lead him back toward the house.

"C'mon," he said, "I'm tired. Let's go to bed." 

"Oniichan?"

"Nani?"

"Can we go in through the window?"

"Sure."

"WOW! You're so cool!"


End file.
